Every community has some amount of “naturally affordable” housing, meaning homes that are cost less to rent or own, without being subsidized or protected by any government or nonprofit program. “Affordable” here should be understood as a relative term, meaning more affordable than most housing on the private market. Naturally occurring affordable housing may include apartments, studios, or homes that are…

• in older multifamily complexes

• mobile homes

• small

• in some disrepair

• lacking parking

• lacking outdoor space

• owned by altruistic landlords who charge a below-market rent

Housing preservation strategies need to look beyond deed-restricted housing to unsubsidized lower-cost homes that can be made permanently affordable.

Preservation may come in the form of housing vouchers for the residents, purchase by a government or nonprofit committed to affordability (including an organization created by the residents themselves), or steering the current owner into a subsidy program to guarantee affordable rents.

This strategy has two main stages: identification and preservation. Compared with deed-restricted housing, more effort must be put into identifying housing that is already affordable. A rental registry is an initial stage to get this information; otherwise an ad hoc approach will be required. Then the preservation strategy would be similar to the strategy employed for deed-restricted housing, except without a hard deadline imposed by the expiration of a subsidy, but also less likely to have a mission-aligned partner already owning or running the complex.